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The Museum’s Collections document the fate of Holocaust victims, survivors, rescuers, liberators, and others through artifacts, documents, photos, films, books, personal stories, and more. Search below to view digital records and find material that you can access at our library and at the Shapell Center.

Yosef B. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3879)

Oral History | Fortunoff Collection ID: HVT-3879

Videotape testimony of Yosef B., who was born in Kraków, Poland in 1920, one of three brothers. He recounts his family's assimilated lifestyle; his father hiring a rabbi to tutor him for his bar mitzvah; studying graphic design at art school; German invasion in 1939; his mother paying a non-Jew to hide him and his brothers; ghettoization; working as a graphic artist for the Judenrat and German police, making signs in Gothic calligraphy; helping produce false papers; his thirteen-year-old brother's death; deportation to Płaszów; doing lettering for Kommandant Amon Goeth; receiving extra food from Polish workers; witnessing his father's murder by a German guard; marrying a fellow prisoner in February 1944; being placed on Schindler's list for helping save the parent of the list maker; transfer with the men from the list to Gross-Rosen, then Brünnlitz; liberation by Soviet troops; returning to Kraków; learning his mother had died after liberation; traveling to Moravska Ostrava, than Opava to find his wife; their return to Kraków; his daughter's birth; emigration to Israel in 1950; and another daughter's birth. Mr. B. discusses testifying at a war crimes trial in Vienna; sharing his experiences with his children; and historical inaccuracies in the film “Schindler's List.” He shows his diploma; a book of songs and drawings he made during the war; and other documents.

Learn about over 1,000 camps and ghettos in Volume I and II of this encyclopedia, which are available as a free PDF download. This reference provides text, photographs, charts, maps, and extensive indexes.